In a small town, how do you get an honest opinion? Here’s some anonymous but fair, blunt, and opinionated opinions about life in Portland, Maine.

Wednesday night was one of those amoeba-envy nights, where you want to split in two and wonder how mitochondria works or what it even is, and what’s the use of teaching Life Science to 7th graders who are no doubt going to drink away all memory of its intricacies when they get to college. Go blue! Where were we?

Both the Asylum and Space had shows we wanted to go to, but being non-amoebas, we opted for Buckethead (tickets bought first) and had to enlist a rogue reporter to give accounts of Secret Chiefs. From first and second hand accounts, let’s just say we can be proud today of having brought this type of music to Portland, and also for our having supported it so well, and on a rainy mid-week eve to boot.

Buckethead packed Asylum and did not let his nerdy (meant endearingly) fandom down, with endless hours of guitar shredding mastery, hidden behind a no-less-than-terrifying white mask. Never have we cared less that the back up band was invisible (though we still care slightly). That said, the reason to go see him is not for music that will move you to tears, but just to be impressed by the fastest fingers this side of Gob Bluth. Of course, it’s easy to impress us, with our campfire appropriate guitar chops, but we got what we wanted.

According to our reporter on the scene, Space was equally electric. Quote from the morning email: “I don’t care how awesome Buckethead was, you made the wrong choice. Secret Chiefs played 3 distinct sets, each one with its own personality, but all sharing the common thread of rhythmic, melodic, genre-ignoring, rock’n’non-rock’n’roll, deep fried in other worldly non rhythms and non melodies dipped in straight up rock’n’roll. Yes, it awesomely made that little sense.”

Also heard it was packed. On a rainy Wednesday night. Who knew? Had we been asked earlier in the day “can Portland support both of these shows on the same night with bad weather and a ripe line up of must see TV concurrently airing?” we’d have said “please pass the hot sauce, brother, surely you must be flavorlessly insane!” But we’d have been wrong, which would have marked our first time. Thankfully we were not asked and our reputation remains pure.

Thumbs up, Asylum and Space, or if this were on facebook: “i like this”.

ahhhh… here it is, the post that gives me all the information I was trying to suss out over the my last few comments. Clearly, you and I (and probably most of the crowd at the HC show) are looking for decidedly different things from our music. I’m not going to insult your tastes, but it’s clear that this blog won’t be informing any of my opinions. The unfortunate thing is that I’ve wasted as much time here as I have. If you weren’t anonymous, I could have determined these things right off the bat.

the above is a perfect example of the pompous, pretentiousness that exists in the Portland scene. I just cant get over it. “clearly you have no taste in music” if you opt to see something other than the “darling” bands of the moment. Wake up

Uhhh, nope, i didn’t say he had bad taste. I said he had different taste. Just as a line can be defined by two points, the two opinions he has stated distilled to their essence: 1)Honey Clouds is overated and boring and 2)Buckethead is awesome definte a spectrum of taste that I have no interest in and tell me that this blog and the opinions therein are not relevant TO ME. The difference between my comment and this blog is that I acknowledge that this is a difference in taste and not incontrovertable fact.

p.s. If you use quotation marks you should actually try to put something resembling a quote in there.

I don’t get it. What’s going on here? I feel like I’m in High School reading this crap. It’s O.K. everybody. It’s fine that not everybody likes every type of music, and it’s fine to support your friends, even if you don’t like they’re band. It is even O.K. to write a bad review of a show (even though I strongly disagree with how it was done). I can’t wait to read a review on my band, I’m sure it will be glowing! Don’t miss it “anonymous”, the band is called Ocean.

I heard Ocean was Blair Waldorf’s favorite band, actually. And she lives in NEW YORK CITY!! I sure hope y’all read NEW YORK CITY out loud, in salsa-commercial-style-cowboy voice!!
Also, I’m totally cutting trig tomorrow and smokin a joint behind the gym. Who’s with me?